Sunday, August 9, 2009

Thing #10 Virtual Worlds

What an interesting journey! It was easy to download the software and to make an avatar, but after that it was hard to get used to the controls. It was very confusing in the beginning, I did not know where I was going or doing. I found some other people on my way to somewhere.

It was fun when I got to Daden Space. I touched few things and got some space equipment and clothes for space travel, like space shirt, pants, shoes, gloves, helmet etc. I also found someone named Solace Beachcomber, he was very helpful and he showed me two foot prints that will transport us to surface of the moon. He just asked me to follow him and so I did. We transported us to the moon, where I saw Apollo 13, and our earth from the surface of the moon. The scary part was you don't know who you are meeting with, their background etc. I was very skeptical about accepting friendships. Once that person started asking personal questions, age, location, and sent an invitation for friendship, I thought it is time for me to go.

I just looked around touched few things and once I saw the landmark that will transport me back to the earth, I touched it I was was back. This is very-very addicting, the students are definitely going to get addicted to this.

I have seen my kids play ruinscape and in Wii also they have their avatars, where they buy and sell stuff, but I don't know how this will help them in education. I tried the link Education in Second Life, and read that lots of colleges and universities are using second life in education, but I still don't know how I can use this in my school.

It was very interesting experience for me and I am definitely going to go there again in a different setting find new people and will try to see how this can be used in education. Online safety will be very important to cover, before introducing this to the students. Students of course will love it.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

You did way better than me- Second Life drove me round the bend.

VWB said...

you explored a "world" I have not heard people talk about...would love to have conversation about it sometime in reall life!

Andrea said...

You made me laugh with your comment about the person who helped you asking personal questions and wanting to be your friend.

One of my daughter's Health classes at U of H was in Second Life. She said that on tests the teacher would throw in random questions about things they would only know if they had actually gone into Second Life and completed assignments.

A search of how to use Second Life in the classroom turned up many articles.

Second Life is a great digital simulator.